Girl Alone Part 36

But all the time her eyes were darting about on their quest for David.

She spotted him at last, near the door of the ballroom, moodily listening to whatever it was that Courtney Barr was saying in his most unctuous, weighty manner.

"Please-I'll be back soon!" Sally gasped to her amazed partner, and broke from his grasp.

She did not in the least care that curious glances and uplifted brows followed her fleet progress across the crowded ballroom floor. Her whole attention was given to David, David who looked ill-at-ease and wretched-

"Aren't you going to dance with me?" she cried as soon as she reached him and her adopted father. "You mustn't let Father monopolize you.

Come, before the music stops."

Unsmiling, David took her into his arms, gingerly, as if he were afraid of crus.h.i.+ng the precious dress.

"Do you remember the other time we danced together, David?" she whispered, her voice tender with memories. "In the Carsons' parlor. No one else would dance with me and Pearl could have slain me because you did. Remember?"

David nodded, held her just a trifle closer, but his face was as grim and unhappy as ever. She tucked her head against his broad breast and closed her eyes so that he could not see her tears. When the music stopped abruptly, she seized his hand, drew him urgently.

"We've got to go somewhere to talk, David. I can't stand-this."

He let her lead him down three flights of the magnificent circular marble staircase, and because he was so silent she thought miserably that it might be hurting him that she was so much at home in this vast, splendid house.

"Miss Rice's office!" she cried, after he had darted about in an unsuccessful effort to find a secluded nook not already occupied by truant couples.

When the door had closed upon them, she faced him, her breath catching on a little gasp of antic.i.p.ation. But his arms stayed rigidly at his side.

"It was in this very room, David," she began eagerly, "that I fought the battle with Mother and won. I made her keep her promise to me to invite you to my coming-out ball. She promised me two and a half years ago, promised so I would promise her not to write to you. But I wrote you every week, sometimes oftener, and I'm still writing every week, though I can't mail the letters. Now I can! Now I can! Do you realize I'm of age, David? I'm eighteen and a half, and I'm 'out.' Isn't that funny?

I'm officially 'out' now, and I can do as I please."

Her voice dragged a little at the end, for he was looking at her as if she were a stranger, or as if he were trying to make her feel like a stranger to him. With a moan, she lifted her arms and crept so close to him that she could lay her head against his breast. "Aren't you-going to kiss me, David? I've waited so long, so long-"

She felt him stiffen, then his hands came up slowly and fastened upon hers. But it was only to remove her hands from his shoulders-

"You must forget me, Sally, or remember me only when you remember Sally Ford and Pitty Sing and Jan and Pop Bybee. We all belong together in your memory, and none of us belongs in Sally Barr's life." His voice was level, heavy, not the young, tender, musical voice that had made love to her during the carnival days.

She took a backward step, a little drunkenly, and the face she lifted bravely for whatever blow he was going to deal her was pinched and white, the eyes blue-black with pain. "Don't you love me any more, David?"

"I'm a poor man and I'm not a fortune-hunter," David answered grimly.

"I-don't know Sally Barr."

She shrank from him then, backward, step by step, so stricken, so white-faced, that the boy clenched his hands in agony.

They were still staring at each other when the door opened, and an almost forgotten but now shockingly familiar voice sang out nonchalantly:

"Bobby Proctor told me I'd find you here, Sally."

It was Arthur Van Horne, whom she had not seen since the last day of the carnival in Capital City.

"Please don't go, David!" Sally implored, but he mistook her distress, occasioned by Arthur Van Home's entirely unexpected appearance, for a plea for a longer interview which he knew would only cause them both pain.

He shook his head dumbly and strode to the door. He paused there a moment to bow jerkily first toward Sally, then toward Van Horne, who was watching the scene with amused, cynical eyes.

Pride mercifully came to Sally's aid then; she closed her lips firmly over the question she had been about to fling at David with desperate urgency. She even managed to wave her hand with what she hoped was airy indifference as David opened the door.

"So!" Van Horne chuckled when the door had closed softly. "It's still Sally and David, isn't it? I'm glad I was vouchsafed a glimpse of this paragon. Astonis.h.i.+ngly good-looking in a Norse Viking sort of way, but rather a bull in a China shop here, isn't he? But I presume that is why Enid fondly hoped when she allowed him to come. I gather that she did invite him? A very clever woman, Enid. I've always said so."

Sally's teeth closed hurtingly over her lower lip, but she said nothing.

The pain and horror of David's uncompromising rebuff were still too great to permit room in her heart for fear of Van Horne. Of course he had recognized her at once, had undoubtedly recognized her from her pictures in the papers, but what did it matter now? David was gone-gone-He had not even kissed her-

"Still afraid of me, Sally?" Van Horne laughed, as her eyes remained fixed on his face in a blind, unseeing stare.

"Afraid of you?" Sally echoed, her voice struggling strangely through pain. "Oh, you mean-?" She tried to collect her wits, to push aside the incredible fact of David's desertion, so that she could concentrate on Van Horne and the frightening significance of his presence here coupled with his knowledge of her past.

"Dear little Sally!" Van Horne said tenderly, and Sally clenched her fist to strike him for using the words which had been heavenly sweet when David had uttered them so long ago. "I told you the last time I saw you that you had not seen the last of Arthur Van Horne. I meant it, but I give you my word I hardly expected to find you _here_! I spent the deuce of a lot of time and money trying to trace you after you left the carnival. Old Bybee finally told me that you'd run away and had probably married your David. So I took my broken heart to China, j.a.pan, Egypt and G.o.d knows where. And now like the chap who sought for the Holy Grail, I find you at home waiting for me."

"I wasn't waiting for you," Sally contradicted him indignantly. "I was waiting for David and he's just told me that he doesn't want me. I hoped I'd never see you again!"

"Why, Sally, Sally!" Van Horne chided her, his black eyes full of mocking humor. "Don't you realize that I'm the oldest friend you have in this new life of yours? I really haven't got used to the idea yet of your being Enid Barr's daughter. Of course I knew there was something mysterious about her overweening interest in 'Princess Lalla,' but this thick old bean of mine wasn't functioning very well in those days. My heart was too full of that same lovely little crystal-gazer. But when I read the rather masterly bit of fiction in the papers, the story which good old asinine Courtney Barr gave out as to your parentage and his wards.h.i.+p which he had supplanted by a legal adoption, the old bean began to click again, and I can a.s.sure you I got a great deal of quiet enjoyment out of the thing. Fancy the impeccable Enid Barr's having-"

"Oh, stop" Sally commanded him, flaming with anger. "Don't dare say a word against my mother-I mean, against Enid-"

"Against your mother," Van Horne corrected her serenely. "Of course I haven't told anyone, Sally, and I don't really see why I should, if-Listen, child: don't you think we ought to have a long, comfortable talk about-old times? We're likely to be interrupted here any minute by a chaperon-or by your mother or by a couple of young idiots seeking a quiet place to 'neck' in. Slip out of the house when the show's over-the servants' entrance will be better-and we'll go for a drive through the park."

"I shall do no such thing," Sally repudiated the suggestion hotly. "I'm going back to the ballroom now. Please don't come with me."

When she arrived, breathless, at the door of the ballroom, she b.u.mped into Enid, whose face was white and anxious and suddenly almost old.

"Darling, _where_ have you been?" her mother whispered fiercely. "I've had Courtney and Randall and two of the footmen looking for you. This is _your_ party, you know. You have other guests besides David Nash. I knew it was a mistake to ask him-"

"Where is he, Mother?" Sally interrupted rudely. "I've been with someone else most of the time." She could not bring herself yet to mention Van Horne's name to her mother, for fear Enid would notice that something was sadly amiss.

"I haven't seen him," Enid protested. "But run along now and dance. It's the last dance before supper. Remember that Grant Proctor is taking you down. Do be sweet to him, Sally."

"She would like for me to marry Grant Proctor," Sally reflected dully, as she obediently let herself be drawn into the dance by an ardent-eyed young man whose name she could not remember. "She wants me to marry Grant Proctor, when I'm already half-married to David. But David doesn't want me! Oh, David!"

Just before supper was announced she slipped away to her own rooms, to cry the hot tears that were pressing against her eyeb.a.l.l.s. And on her dressing table she found a note, undoubtedly placed there by her own maid. Her cold, shaking fingers had difficulty in opening it, for she knew at once that it was from David.

"Dear little Sally," she read, and the tears gushed then. "Forgive me for bolting like this, but I couldn't stand it any longer. You know I love you, that 'I'll be loving you always,' but you must also know that Sally Barr cannot marry David Nash, and that anything less would be too terrible for both of us. You must be wondering why I came. I wanted to see for myself that you are happy, that your mother is good to you. And, of course, I wanted to see you again, wanted to see if there was anything of my Sally in this beautiful Sally Barr that the papers are making so much of.

"I think it has made it harder for me to find that underneath the new surface you are still Sally Ford. But they'll change the core of you almost as rapidly as they have remade the surface of you into a society beauty. And after you're changed all through you'll be glad I went away.

I'll carry my own Sally in my heart always, and the new Sally Barr will fall in love with the splendid young son of some old family, marry him and make her mother very happy. She would never forgive us, Sally, if I took you away and made you live on what I can earn as a farmer, and she would be right not to forgive. I would not forgive myself, and after awhile you'd be unhappy, too, remembering all that you had lost, including a mother who adores you. Goodby, Sally. David."

She was so quiet, so white at supper that Grant Proctor, who was already in love with her, begged her to let him give her a drink from his pocket flask, but she refused, scarcely knowing what he had said to her. Once she caught her mother's eyes, and s.h.i.+vered at the anxiety and reproach in them.

Suddenly a fierce resentment against Enid Barr rose and beat sickeningly in her blood. If she had not interfered, she and David would have been married long ago. They would have been happy in poverty, would have struggled side by side to banish poverty, might even have had a tiny David and Sally of their own by this time. And now David was irrevocably gone, so that Enid Barr might keep her daughter. Sally wanted to nurse her anger against her mother, but it was impossible to do so, for she loved her.

When the jazz orchestra was hilariously summoning the debutantes to the dance floor again Arthur Van Horne claimed Sally over the protests of the half dozen younger men who were good-naturedly wrangling for the honor.

"You're going to meet me after this foolish, delightful show is over, aren't you? Of course you are!" he smiled down upon her as he led her out upon the floor.

Sally looked up at him wearily and saw that there was more than amus.e.m.e.nt and gallantry in his narrowed, smiling black eyes. There was menace, which he did not try to conceal, wanted her to see-